I hear a lot of people saying that HD is irrelevant to this generation because "hardly anyone has an HDTV" (the usual estimate is about 25% of people). I don't imagine anyone remembers, but I've argued a few times on here that this estimate is wrong because: A) the polls that estimate was based on (the actual figure was 28%) were taken at the beginning of the year, and HDTV penetration rates are much higher now, and B) that figure was for the general population, whereas video gamers are a technologically affluent subgroup in which HDTV owners will naturally be much more common. My guess was that something like 70% of PS3 owners were using HDTVs, and more than half of Wii owners (I never got around to the 360).
Finally, Nielson's done the research to find the actual figures. They are:
Percentage of consoles hooked up to an HDTV
Wii: 65%
XBox 360: 66%
PS3: 71%
The audio hookup data is interesting too:
Only a small fraction of people are using SDTVs or standard TV speakers.
There are a lot of implications of this, which could have (and have had) threads of their own. At the very least though, I hope this ends the myth that HDTV and HD support don't matter. HD is already the norm; in five years, it'll be almost ubiquitous.
